This New Skin
by Leven
Summary: It is Wednesday morning and Ray Barnett has an epiphany. A Ray-centric character piece with a splash on Ray/Neela.


**Disclaimer:** I don't own Ray, Neela or ER in general. They belong to NBC and all the other people who have something thing to do with this show.  
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_We will never leave this place.  
We need never feel alone__  
We will learn to feel quite clean in  
__This new skin that we have grown__  
Because our young and healthy bones  
Would never lead us astray_

_-Laura Marling, __You're No God_

Ray has been waiting for some sort of life-changing epiphany for a long time. When it comes it sneaks up like one of his Aunt Beth's tickle attacks when he was little. He expected it to hit him like the truck that took his legs, sudden and destructive. He expected it to pull at the already tattered seams of his life and rip the fabric apart. That isn't what happened. It came with a slow crawl instead, patching up some of the weaker bits of the fabric of his soul.

He's just starting his morning when it happens. He's sitting at the dining table, reading the newspaper, specifically the funny pages, and eating from a rather large bowl of cereal. It is a typical morning, though today is Wednesday and he has Wednesdays off. After this, he knows, he'll go for a run, run errands, perhaps play some guitar. As he goes to put his bowl in the kitchen sink, he stops and puts it in the dishwasher instead. _No reason to put it in later if you can do it now,_ says the voice in his head. It is not this little change in his cleaning habits that causes his realization. Neither is the fact that he puts his newspaper on top of the pile of papers and magazines instead of just leaving it open on the table. It isn't the spring in his step, nor both his running legs being in the same place. It isn't that the grass seemed greener or the sun brighter. It isn't anything he could pinpoint, it just _is_.

He steps outside and simply knows. He _knows_. He still breathes the same, but it's easier, less heavy. He still walk the same, but it's softer, more his own. He still thinks the same, but it's in the back of his head, less overt. It doesn't feel like he's come full circle, in fact, it doesn't feel life-changing at all. So when he starts running he runs like it's any other day. He greets old Mr. Patterson from two houses down because he knows the man feels lonely and whistles at pregnant Darleen Dowry are the end of the road because he knows she feels fat. He makes all the same turns. He doesn't make better time than usual and he isn't any less sweaty.

He visits his mother, because it's Wednesday and that's when he visits the people who need visiting. It's routine, a result of not being able to take care of himself for the longest time. He feels as annoyed at his mother's constant fussing as he always has, so he leaves after an hour or two, like he always does. He kisses her goodbye, promises to come over for dinner next week and drives to the supermarket. He does groceries for the week. He has a list, carefully crafted, which he looks at occasionally. _Don't want to forget anything_, the voice reminds him. It's a Wednesday activity like it always has been. When he drives home he sings along with the radio, forgetting his dislike of Journey for the moment. Some teenage girls hear him and smile in his direction. At home he unloads his groceries, grabs his guitar, and heads out.

He walks to the end of the road to Darleen Dowry's house. He's taken to doing this because he met Darleen when she was still Darleen McKinney in seventh grade. She had red hair and freckles and quite the mouth on her. She is one of those things in his life that changed but still managed to stay the same. She is married to a man that works 60 hour weeks and still managed to produce 4.5 kids in six years, but her hair is still red, her freckles still plentiful, and she still swears. He plays the little Dowrys some Beatles songs, because they need to know the classics. He plays Darleen some Bon Jovi, because that's her favorite. He gets chocolate cake in return. Darleen told him once, when she was about to give birth to Kid #4, that he never used to be this nice in school. He told her people can change.

He doesn't go straight home. He stops by Mr. Patterson, who has been living on this street since they first built the houses decades ago. Mrs. Patterson passed away shortly after he moved in down the road. Short and gray in her 80's, she was a picture perfect old lady. She'd given him a carrot cake when he moved in, so he went to the wake and gave his condolences. He'd borrowed some sugar from Mr. Patterson once and left 90 minutes later, thoroughly briefed on the couple's history. They were high school sweethearts. They had two sons that almost never visited, four grandchildren that never called, and two great-grandchildren that were too young to care. He plays chess with the old man and loses, which he always does, because he plays chess the way he plays the violin. Which is to say: badly. He bids the man a jovial farewell, even though they had a heavy discussion about the war on terror. _Never part on bad terms_, says the voice in his head wisely. He's learned, over the course of the last few months, to never discuss wars with a history teacher.

At home he checks his email and his messages. He forgot his cell phone in the bedroom like he tends to do, and his messages are the same as any Wednesday's messages. Nurses from the clinic update him on new patients, because he's always worried about them in the beginning. His mother reminds him to put the dinner on his calendar, because she knows he's busy and absentminded. Kenny from his favorite bar invites him to a party, because they're friends and he doesn't get out enough. His emails are typical as well: offers for discount Viagra and an oddly poetic one from Bret saying he's coming to Baton Rouge in two weeks. He checks the schedules on fridge. _Having dinner at a regular time is important_, the voice recites dutifully. So he starts dinner, his famous spaghetti and meatballs, and mentally pats himself on the shoulder for having such excellent culinary skills. He still doesn't feel any different. The sauce tastes the same on his tongue; the meatballs roll the same way in his hands.

He's plating the pasta when he hears the door open. The timing is so improbably perfect that he can't help but grin about it. She, Neela, the voice in his head, kisses him hello, takes in the scent of dinner, and complements his timing. This time he feels it, the epiphany he had this morning. He feels it in his heart, at the tears that have been whip stitched back together. He lied to himself for a long time. He told her once, not even all that long ago, that they were both in a good place. He'd known when he told her about this mythical 'good place', that he was lying through his teeth. That good place was actually a tolerable place. It wasn't a place of self-loathing, like it had been in the beginning. It wasn't a place for the rambunctious young man she'd first met either. A good place would have had her, in the flesh, all the time. So what he had, in actuality, was a sad imitation of a good place. He doesn't tell her these things. They make her sad, because she, like him, had only just reached the good place three months ago. She's still waiting for her life-changing epiphany, he knows.

After dinner he kisses her, really kisses her. He puts his entire scarred and stitched-up heart into it, every tattered edge of his newly mended soul. This morning it hadn't felt like this, not even slightly. It had felt like a normal Wednesday with an added kick. He'd felt like himself with a band-aid on his heart. He feels like a new person now, like she just put him together out of old discarded fabric. He feels his new ragdoll skin on fire and smiled into her mouth. She pulls away, smiling, crinkles in the corner of her eyes, and asks what has gotten into him. When he laughs it rumbles deep in his newly assembled ribcage.

"You're really here." He says. He means it in a physical way, a mental way, in every way he can think of. "You're really here."


End file.
